Most 21st-century businesses depend on their supporting IT infrastructure. Technology is a strategic asset that includes a host of applications from cloud services to mobility and collaboration systems. Call centre and BPO (business process outsourcing) environments must be fully optimised and support business transformation projects.

Transformation must have a precise focus on business performance with long-term benefits. The reasons for transformational solutions can be driven by:

• Growth – New services or products are introduced with call centres supporting growth by introducing, upselling, and cross-selling products and services
• Mergers or Separations – Business acquisitions or split-ups require customer trust and brand relationship management during inbound and outbound processes
• Downsizing – A reduction of services or quantities as a response to demand, supported by the relay of information to customers
• Pivoting – Customer needs change as technology transforms with services honed on the real-time needs of customers with multi-channel solutions

To ensure transformational goals and objectives align and support the organisation’s business strategy, several aspects need careful consideration. Steps include financial planning, identification of new technological developments, internal resource management, and objective setting.

Innovation and development must support flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency as new systems align with business goals and balance the common platform upon which service providers and customers operate.

Here we look at building a strong business transformation strategy that delivers the target outcomes and out-performs the competition. This is a process that will ensure you invest wisely in the latest communications and IT architecture, driven by innovation, and implemented to secure long-term value

A call centre audit is a vital step in business transformation because you need to know what you have before knowing what you need. The strategy must identify where new technology can be introduced to improve processes or increase the life of existing legacy infrastructure.

Measurable performance criteria should be collected and analysed to get a complete view of asset performance. The audit will show if the call centre is fulfilling its role and determine if it has enough resources to accelerate service levels.

Analysing the data and monitoring the measurable metrics determines the efficiency and informs the organisation of whether human and technological resources are working in synchrony to achieve the best results. A call centre audit should review workflows, processes, policies, procedures, and agent guidelines, as well as standard metrics such as cost per call and the speed to answer.

Customer care, sales, and lead generation are all affected by the performance of the helpdesk. Before the structure of the business transformation can take place, it is advantageous to know and understand the:

• Call volume efficiency – This is the average number of outbound and inbound calls per agent and identifies the number of connections made. This metric shows if the call centre is securing the best level of productivity to maximise results.
• Handling time – This is not just the time spent on-call but is indicative of customer engagement. The helpdesk can drive awareness of services and products, but time must be balanced between the number of calls and agent availability.
• Call drops – Abandonments occur for numerous reasons and can show a poor immediacy of available support, improper call routing, poor forecasting and agents spending too long sourcing resolutions. Call drops also link back to time management and balancing availability while capitalising on sales opportunities.
• First-call resolution – This can demonstrate the agent’s aptitude, poor agent onboarding processes, a lack of multilingual support, and the availability of experts. This critical metric can highlight the need for further training or that agent scripts are poorly-crafted.
• Answer relevancy – Closely linked to the first-call resolution, this shows the customer satisfaction level and can be determined by recording and reviewing calls.

Following the contact centre audit, system design precedes the business transformation by selecting the right software and hardware solutions. The system design must consider how new elements will integrate with legacy technology, user adoption, business processes, and information management.

The deployment stage of business transformation needs to be carefully and professionally managed. A complex nature exists because implementation inevitably touches business-critical technology. Technology implementation should minimise disruption to regular business activities.

Once transformational solutions are installed, it is essential to monitor operational performance through real data and user interactions. Adjustments are made to optimise performance and maximise the return on investment.

Critical systems must be managed to maintain application uptime. Effective management is essential to ensuring operational efficiency, securing profitability, maintaining system health, and ensuring infrastructure do not fail.

Business transformation with call centres and BPOs is a delicate process, but with the right project strategy, technological innovations can be introduced, and business objectives can be met.

For more information on how ICON implements business transformation within its outsourcing solutions, please click here.